1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to facilitating and providing indications of group coherence in any group environment, such as a gaming, competitive, cooperative or collaborative environment.
2. Background of the Invention
With the growing complexity of life, the relation between physiological conditions and emotional health becomes of increasing interest. Many studies have shown that stress and other emotional factors increase the risk of disease, reduce performance and productivity and severely restrict the quality of life. To this end, the medical communities around the world continually seek remedies and preventive plans. Recently a focus on the self-regulation of systems within the body has led to research in the areas of biofeedback.
Over the last 25 years, a variety of techniques have been introduced as alternatives to more traditional psychotherapies or pharmaceutical interventions for improving mental and/or emotional imbalances, reducing stress and improving performance. Devices have been designed for this purpose, some portable and some not. Portable devices capable of measuring heart rate are known for use in monitoring physical fitness activities, for example.
Another more recent tool is Freeze-Frame®, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,358,201 (the '201 Patent), which is hereby incorporated may be used for mental and emotional self-management and performance enhancement. It consists of consciously disengaging the mental and emotional reactions to either external or internal events and then shifting one's center of attention to the physical area around the heart and breathing as if you are breathing through the heart at a rhythm of 5 seconds on the in-breath and 5 seconds on the out-breath as if you are breathing out through the solar plexus. These steps facilitate a shift in the heart's rhythmic beating pattern. The next step is to intentionally shift one's emotional state by focusing on a positive emotion such as love, care or appreciation. In one embodiment, this emotional shift stabilizes the coherent physiological mode and takes the process past what can be achieved with breathing techniques alone.
While the concepts disclosed in the '201 Patent are innovative and groundbreaking, they tend to focus on self-management and performance evaluation in the context of coherence. As such, there is still a need for a system and method for facilitating coherence in a group context.